Re: [Manycouches] Daniel presentation @ 113 - virtual interim meetings

[Eliot Lear <[e-mail]>]

Hi John,

Your note ties to Mark Nottingham's draft about the scheduling of 
virtual interims.

I'll just add that "dropping in" is something that could be better 
facilitated by virtual interims because there are less chances of 
conflicts.  That's because there are so many simultaneous tracks at an 
in-person IETF meeting.

I'm not sure I agree with you about not holding in-person interims.  I 
firmly believe that the RFC Editor Future Development Program could have 
accomplished its work about a year sooner than we did, had we been able 
to meet in person.  Of course, the chairs couldn't even begin to 
contemplate such a meeting due to COVID. But I will note that almost 
*all* of our progress was made in high bandwidth settings, and 
conversely almost *none* of the serious issues we faced got resolved 
over email.  Now, that may have been the nature of the work.  The 
program wasn't a working group, and in particular it largely didn't 
address technical problems.

Still, what I take from that is that once one has a good starting point, 
there are phases of work within a working group where high bandwidth 
access is very important, and one hour every three months isn't going to 
cut it.  If there are substantial amounts of issues to be discussed, 
then a two or even three day face to face seems appropriate.  I think 
the httpbis working group demonstrated that with great success.

Was there a mono-culture in that working group? Maybe so, but the 
alternative would be that not only would http3 not be on the way, but 
likely http2 would still be in process.  And we certainly didn't have a 
mono-culture in the RFC program, and we had plenty of interims.

I'm not saying that every dispute can be resolved just due to an in 
person meeting.  Sometimes, other factors come into play.  For those who 
particpated in webrtc, it seemed that an evolution of thought and 
process was required.  I think I saw some of that in the RFC program as 
well.

Eliot

On 13.04.22 05:17, John C Klensin wrote:
>
> --On Tuesday, April 12, 2022 14:41 -0700 Fred Baker
> <[e-mail]>  wrote:
>
>>
>>> On Apr 12, 2022, at 8:51 AM, Joel M. Halpern
>>> <[e-mail]>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Trimmed, to comment on one possibility raised by Eliot.
>>> Joel
>>>
>>> On 4/12/2022 11:29 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:
>>> ...
>>>>   * Mandatory virtual interim meetings at a certain tempo
>>> ...
>>>
>>> Actually, I would prefer fewer virtual per-WG interim
>>> meetingss.   As a person who participates in a lot of IETF
>>> working groups, and also in other SDOs, regular virtual
>>> interim meetings are a pain.  Regular virtual interim
>>> meetings in the sweet spot that people like for international
>>> calls makes everything collide.  Having interims when there
>>> is actually a need for discussion on a specific topic makes
>>> good sense.  But interim meetings at a "certain tempo".
>>> Please, no.
>>>
>>> Yours,
>>> Joel
>> I concur. The point of plenary meetings is, in part, to
>> justify the travel expense, and the point of meetings at all
>> is to enable people to talk with each other face to face.
>> Regular face to face interims would mean that many people
>> would simply not find the expense justified, and virtual
>> interims prevent the face to face conversations that need to
>> be had.
> To take this a step further, one of the IETF's main strengths
> lies in the ability of people to look in on and participate in
> work outside their main area of expertise, activities that often
> start on a drop-in basis.  I think we could continue (or resume)
> that with fewer meetings a year as long as we renew our strong
> commitment to doing most of our work on mailing lists and to
> focus there and on occasional meetings.  At least for the WG's
> I'm following (fewer than years ago, see below), many virtual
> interims often act as substitutes for that mailing list work,
> possibly leading to getting more work done but at the price of
> broad participation (at least sometimes due to the choice of
> times for those meetings).  Except, perhaps, for people with
> unlimited travel budgets and the ability to spend most of their
> time on the IETF, f2f interims would likely be even worse,
> resulting in participants making tradeoffs between traveling to
> and participating in those interims because the are most
> involved with (or sponsored for) the WGs holding them and other
> WGs to which they could be contributing broader perspectives
> and/or the plenary meetings themselves.
>
> I think we could get by with two, or possibly even one, f2f
> plenary meeting a year without much damage... but only if we
> recommitted to trying to get as much done as possible on mailing
> lists, minimized the number of interims (with no f2f ones except
> under the most unusual or circumstances), and thought carefully
> about some all-online plenary-type sessions.
>
> I think it would also be wise to think carefully about how much
> work we are taking on and, in particular, how broad the
> commitment needs to be to spin up a WG.  Especially with fewer
> f2f meetings and more reliance on interims that people need to
> be really committed to the WG to attend (even online), we could
> easily see increasing numbers of WG where almost all of the
> participants share a single point of view on the relevant issues
> and how they should be addressed.  The IETF adds almost no value
> to such groups other than endorsements of their conclusions.
> Perhaps things have evolved to the point that people want the
> IETF to be in that business, but I'm not enthused.  In any
> event, I think we need to consider the possibility that an IETF
> that needs to rely on fewer traditional in-person meetings -- no
> matter the mix of online and hybrid ones--   simply cannot
> sustain the amount and quality of work on which the IETF built
> its reputation.
>
> In addition, if we go in that direction, or even stay with the
> current "hybrid" model, I'd encourage the IESG to think about
> reinstating a meeting pattern we dropped many years ago, I
> believe under pressure from too many WGs.  That was to start the
> meetings of with a Monday morning plenary that summarized
> important issues for the week and even included reports from
> each Area about what they were doing and focusing on.   HotRFC
> has taken over a bit of that job, but I suggest is a patch
> rather than a replacement for an opportunity for the community
> to get a general understanding of what is being worked on and
> for individuals to make decisions about how to invest their time
> (ideally with a less crowded agenda).
>
> best,
>     john
>
>
>
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